Just a Second

Six years ago the talented young Scottish fiddler Ryan Young released an acclaimed debut album but then suffered an injury to his left hand that almost stopped him playing. “When your hands can’t deliver what your heart feels, a musician can easily fall into despair,” he noted – but he didn’t, and courageously fought to overcome the setback, eventually relearning how to play and even suggesting that the trauma served a purpose, because as a result of adversity he now feels the music even more deeply. There’s certainly plenty of emotional intensity on his belated all-instrumental second album, recorded in live studio takes with only Craig Irving’s acoustic guitar for accompaniment. Produced in clean and pristine fashion by the Boston-based Jesse Lewis, whose past credits include Béla Fleck and Yo-Yo Ma, the nine tracks are mostly traditional Scottish tunes, although Young’s playing also draws on Irish styles to create a gloriously all-encompassing Celtic gallimaufry, from the slow and haunting ‘Woo’ed and Married An A’/Fingal’s Cave’ and ‘The Fox/Flora MacDonald’s/Little Donald in the Pigpen’ to frantic dance tunes such as ‘Ben Lomond/Mrs MacGlashan’s Jig’. Young doesn’t sing and really has no need to do so, for there’s more than enough eloquence in his violin on a set that is both timeless and thrilling in equal measure.